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Increasing the Awareness of Energy Sustainability in Indonesia

October 18, 2019

The role of engineers to ensure our national energy sustainability cannot be underestimated. Thus far, our national electricity is produced by means of coal (61%), gas (21.12%), fossil fuel (4.32%). Meanwhile, renewable energy only contributed 12.71%. It was stated by Beni Suryadi, Manager of Policy, Research and Analytics at ASEAN Centre for Energy at his public lecture titled “Policy Making: Engineers’ Role in Ensuring Sustainable Energy” on Tuesday, September 10th 2019.

As the climate change issue is now getting more attention in the world, Indonesia seems left behind. Even a report showed that Indonesians are most ignorant in ASEAN when it comes to energy sustainability and climate change issue (source: YouGov/ Guardian). This fact apparently affects the awareness of energy sustainability in Indonesia.

He argued that Indonesia is not a big oil and gas producer like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. Therefore, Indonesia should gradually shift to renewable energy sources. The percentage of renewable energy use in Indonesia is still under 10%, which is under expectation.

“We should end our dependency on fossil fuel energy,” he said. Yet, to do so we need to build a stronger commitment and goodwill of all stakeholders, one of which is engineers.

Beni highlighted the role of engineers because it takes competent engineers to make and issue the right and accurate policies for the nation and create innovations that people direly need.

Meanwhile, the role of Indonesian engineers so far in the development of sustainable energy sector is relatively low. “Only 20% of renewable energy research and innovations is created by Indonesian researchers in ASEAN region. Compared to the large population that we have and the fact that Indonesia’s energy consumption is the highest in ASEAN, this needs a lot of improvement,” he said.

At the lecture, students were asked to form three groups that represented the policy makers for renewable energy sector, nuclear energy sector and fossil fuel energy sector. Afterwards, they challenged each other’s proposition. This was done to give them a simulation of how to form a real public policy on energy in Indonesia.

Beni initially worked as a researcher at the same institution. He is one of the industry experts that the Faculty of Engineering and Technology invites on a regular basis to the campus in order to share highly valued real experience and tips with students. This way, our students can obtain insights and strategize their future career path accordingly.